As part of the CLIR-funded, “Our Story” project, Atlanta University Center, Spelman College, and the DLG are happy to announce additional content documenting the largest consortium of African American private institutions of higher education.

The Center–Quarterly journal of the Interdenominational Center’s cooperating seminaries and the Stewart Missionary Foundation of Africa dating from 1960 to 1966 and containing articles of wide general interest as well as more detailed discussions or special subjects from the Divisions of Biblical, Historical, Theological, and practical.

The Foundation–Quarterly journal published between 1905 and 1980 for the Gammon Theological Seminary, its alumni, and the Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa.

The Lantern–Alumni news publication covering the period from 1984 to 2009 highlighting the work of I.T.C. alumni and important events and activities.

Yearbooks -Yearbooks of the Interdenominational Theological Center dating from 1945 and 1986 and chronicling the annual activities of Gammon Theological Seminary, The Morehouse School of Religion, Phillips School of Theology, and Turner Theological Seminary.

Morehouse College

Morehouse College Photographs–Photographs depicting the buildings and grounds, students, campus events and visitors, faculty, and individuals associated with Morehouse College, the only all-male historically Black college in the United States, dating from the 1880s through the 1970s.

Sharon Blank, the assistant director of the Screven-Jenkins Regional Library System, discusses her selection of materials for the digitization project:

“It was brought up that there weren’t a lot of resources covering life in post-WWII life in small rural towns like we have here in Screven and Jenkins Counties in Georgia. A proposed collection focus was that small-town community life. One of our towns, Sylvania, is actually home to the longest continuously-running Livestock Festival in Georgia, possibly in the country, and in the post-war boom times, Screven County was one of the places that many people stopped at on their way to the new tourist destination of Florida. The resources I selected gave a good glimpse of what life was like in those days. Most of [the resources] were scrapbooks which had been collected to show off how great life could be in a small town… In addition to the scrapbooks and other materials offered from the library’s collection, there were also a collection of photos from one of our county’s citizens, Hilda Boykin, who literally rescued them from the trash after the Screven County News, one of the two newspapers we had during the 1950s and 1960s, closed. While most of the issues of that paper have been preserved on microfilm, most of the photos were never printed, and have the benefits of both being taken by a professional photographer and of being taken by someone with unparalleled access to events.”

Blank notes that “many of the items offered for digitization are utterly unique. If anything were to happen to the library and the items in our J. Dixon Hollingsworth, Jr. Genealogy/Georgia Room collection were damaged, those items would be completely irreplaceable…some of the items presented for digitization were so fragile that we didn’t dare have them out for the public to peruse. The digitization project will allow people around the world to get a glimpse of our area’s rich history and a better look at the life of a small rural Georgia town, without risking damage to the items in the collection.”

Blank recommends looking at the Rodeo City Scrapbook. “It was a scrapbook created for a contest, and was illustrated by Gaetanna Bazemore Lariscy, an employee of the city who was also a talented artist and member of the Sylvania Junior Woman’s Club. It is a work of art in itself, and you can see the time and care that went into creating the scrapbook for the city that she loved.”

Finally, Blank emphasizes the importance of making resources from smaller towns in Georgia available online.

“There aren’t a lot of places you can see what a small town in those times looked like through the eyes of its people, and we are glad to share a look through our people’s eyes… because communities like ours tend to be more easily overlooked and harder to research than big cities like Savannah or Atlanta, every bit of information that is shared will make it easier for the historian or genealogist to understand what was going on in the past.”

Please enjoy these new resources in the Screven-Jenkins Regional Library System Collection!